Disentangling transients and their host galaxies with Scarlet2: A framework to forward model multi-epoch imaging

Abstract

Many science cases for wide-field time-domain surveys rely on accurate identification and characterization of the galaxies hosting transient and variable objects. In the era of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory the number of known transient and variable sources will grow by orders of magnitude, and many of these sources will be blended with their host galaxies and neighboring galaxies. A diverse range of applications - including the classification of nuclear and non-nuclear sources, identification of potential host galaxies, extraction of host galaxy SEDs without requiring a transient-free reference image, and combined analysis of photometry from multiple surveys - will benefit from a flexible framework to model time-domain imaging of transients. We describe a time-domain extension of the Scarlet2 scene modeling code for multi-epoch, multi-band, and multi-resolution imaging data to extract simultaneous transient and host galaxy models. Scarlet2 leverages the benefits of data-driven priors on galaxy morphology, is fully GPU compatible, and can jointly model multi-resolution data from ground and space-based surveys. We demonstrate the method on simulated LSST-like supernova imaging, low-resolution Zwicky Transient Facility imaging of tidal disruption events, and Hyper Suprime Cam imaging of variable AGN out to z = 4 in the COSMOS fields. We show that Scarlet2 models provide accurate transient and host galaxy models as well as accurate measurement of host-transient spatial offsets, and demonstrate future applications to the search for 'wandering' massive black holes.

Accepted to Astronomy and Computing. 17 pages, 11 figures. Feedback welcome!

References in corpus (36)

• The Zwicky Transient Facility: System Overview, Performance, and First Results
• Overview of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys
• A method for optimal image subtraction
• CIGALE: a python Code Investigating GALaxy Emission
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Data Processing, Products, and Archive
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Science Objectives
• Pyro: Deep Universal Probabilistic Programming
• Seventeen Tidal Disruption Events from the First Half of ZTF Survey Observations: Entering a New Era of Population Studies
• Third Data Release of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Observing System
• Composable Effects for Flexible and Accelerated Probabilistic Programming in NumPyro
• WISE photometry for 400 million SDSS sources
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II: Photometry and Supernova Ia Light Curves from the 2005 data
• The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope: 100 Hubbles for the 2020s
• Optimal Time-Series Selection of Quasars
• A luminous X-ray outburst from an intermediate-mass black hole in an off-centre star cluster
• Multimessenger Signatures of Massive Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies
• Optimization of the Observing Cadence for the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: a pioneering process of community-focused experimental design
• Quasar Selection Based on Photometric Variability
• A search for optical AGN variability in 35,000 low-mass galaxies with the Palomar Transient Factory
• Variability selected high-redshift quasars on SDSS Stripe 82
• SCARLET: Source separation in multi-band images by Constrained Matrix Factorization
• First Cosmology Results Using Type Ia Supernovae From the Dark Energy Survey: Photometric Pipeline and Light Curve Data Release
• Short GRB Host Galaxies. II. A Legacy Sample of Redshifts, Stellar Population Properties, and Implications for their Neutron Star Merger Origins
• Decomposition of the Host Galaxies of Active Galactic Nuclei Using Hubble Space Telescope Images
• Variability-selected intermediate mass black hole candidates in dwarf galaxies from ZTF and WISE
• Glimmering in the dark: modeling the low-mass end of the $M_{\bullet }-\sigma$ relation and of the quasar luminosity function
• Unveiling the Population of Wandering Black Holes via Electromagnetic Signatures
• Dwarf AGNs from Optical Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Insights from the Dark Energy Survey Deep Fields
• AGN on the move: A search for off-nuclear AGN from recoiling SMBHs and ongoing galaxy mergers with the Zwicky Transient Facility
• Dwarf AGNs from Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Intermediate-mass black hole demographics from optical synoptic surveys
• A random forest-based selection of optically variable AGN in the VST-COSMOS field
• A Search for Optical Variability of Type 2 Quasars in SDSS Stripe 82
• AstroPhot: Fitting Everything Everywhere All at Once in Astronomical Images
• A luminous X-ray transient in SDSS J143359.16+400636.0: a likely tidal disruption event
• Score-matching neural networks for improved multi-band source separation

Cited by in corpus (1)

• The Case for Space: Estimating Precise Time Delays from Ground- and Space-Based Observations of Lensed Supernovae with Glimpse